One of our company’s core values is leaving every customer with a referable quality touch.Every time, every touch.

We also want to give back to our communities. For example, when it makes sense, we waive our workshop fees if the triaging enterprise helps children. Like Dr. Melanie Macrorie’s team at Autism From the Start (an amazing autistic preschool) or Lee Nasehi’s crew at Lighthouse Central Florida(vision impaired), or Denise Gurule’s shop at FeedAmerica San Deigo, orLonnie Vanderclise and Kelly Wilson’s amazing work at Weave Gotcha Covered, a work release program reuniting moms with their families.

At the writing of this post, there is a media storm about separating one in six children of adult foreign citizens who attempt to trespass into the United States with their minor children* (five of six children were already separated when their parents sent them with, or are trafficked by other adults).

Under current law (decades old), the adults are queued to Homeland Security processing and their minor children are queued to Health and Human Services (HHS), an arrangement codified and enforced for many years. Parents and children are usually reunited promptly (the same day typically) unless an adult trespasser claims asylum, at which point HHS may only care and protect the children for 20 days — likely less than the asylum process. It can get messy, but this separation was entirely the result of the trespasser’s choosing and our amazing American compassion for the downtrodden. We separate children at the southern border if a familial or custodial relationship cannot be established (fraud), if there is suspicion that the children are victims of human trafficking, or if the adult is referred for prosecution for illegal entry.

So let’s fix it. We need to agree on what the process is (as codified in the law), then triage it against a capability goal that, if delivered, fulfills our core values. I will personally facilitate the triage.

What we know from hundreds of Process Triage workshops is any process under siege will benefit from a triage session, similar to a medical facility during a mass casualty event. Triaging determines the type of treatment or solution and queues these solutions to address the most urgent and efficacious first.

We’ll need an Executive Sponsor and the smartest, go-to, believable experts who live and work the process. I have no doubts we can stack a list of implementable improvements of what to fix first, consistent with our national values, responsibilities, and compassions.

* There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant. Immigrant is a status assigned to a foreign or alien citizen recognized by our Immigration and Naturalization Service; a status granted by our sovereign government, and not self-assigned by the person seeking to immigrate or mislabeled by a private citizen or confused media. If one does not have immigrant status, one is respectfully assumed to be a foreign citizen. And one should be treated with the respect, terms and conditions according to our laws and treaties — just as we wish respect when traveling abroad. If we break another sovereign nation’s visitation laws, we should expect to be treated as they see fit.

It’s always great to receive Process Triage workshop feedback from our sponsors. We were privileged to triage with MRI Global, a long-established research and development institution, headquartered in Kansas City. Tom Sack’s at the helm and offered the following insights after their triage:

We fully embraced TQM to support our efforts to improve processes and continually improve our operations. TQM proved to be very valuable for us and I am delighted to see the ProcessTriage take the TQM approach to the next level. Where TQM would have taken us weeks to get to a prioritized list of improvement activities, ProcessTriage got us there in 1 day…while not glossing over topics or issues. I applaud the ProcessTriage team for creating a robust, thorough and organized approach to process improvement that fits the pace of today’s business environment.

TQM — Total Quality Management is some industrial strength stuff. So to be favorably associated with that body of knowledge, and bringing something more to that party is pleasing.